CAS Configuration Storage

Various properties can be specified in CAS either inside configuration files or as command line switches. This section provides a list common CAS properties and references to the underlying modules that consume them.

This section outlines strategies that can be used to store CAS configuration and settings.

Standalone

This is the default configuration mode which indicates that CAS does NOT require connections to an external configuration server and will run in an embedded standalone mode.

The following settings and properties are available from the CAS configuration catalog:

_{The configuration settings listed below are tagged as Required in the CAS configuration metadata. This flag indicates that the presence of the setting may be needed to activate or affect the behavior of the CAS feature and generally should be reviewed, possibly owned and adjusted. If the setting is assigned a default value, you do not need to strictly put the setting in your copy of the configuration, but should review it nonetheless to make sure it matches your deployment expectations.}

_{The configuration settings listed below are tagged as Optional in the CAS configuration metadata. This flag indicates that the presence of the setting is not immediately necessary in the end-user CAS configuration, because a default value is assigned or the activation of the feature is not conditionally controlled by the setting value.}

cas.standalone.configuration-directory=

Describes a directory path where CAS configuration may be found.

org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.core.config.standalone.StandaloneConfigurationProperties.

cas.standalone.configuration-file=

Describes a file path where that contains the CAS properties in a single file.

org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.core.config.standalone.StandaloneConfigurationProperties.

Configuration Metadata

The collection of configuration properties listed in this section are automatically generated from the CAS source and components that contain the actual field definitions, types, descriptions, modules, etc. This metadata may not always be 100% accurate, or could be lacking details and sufficient explanations.

Be Selective

This section is meant as a guide only. Do NOT copy/paste the entire collection of settings into your CAS configuration; rather pick only the properties that you need. Do NOT enable settings unless you are certain of their purpose and do NOT copy settings into your configuration only to keep them as reference. All these ideas lead to upgrade headaches, maintenance nightmares and premature aging.

YAGNI

Note that for nearly ALL use cases, declaring and configuring properties listed here is sufficient. You should NOT have to explicitly massage a CAS XML/Java/etc configuration file to design an authentication handler, create attribute release policies, etc. CAS at runtime will auto-configure all required changes for you. If you are unsure about the meaning of a given CAS setting, do NOT turn it on without hesitation. Review the codebase or better yet, ask questions to clarify the intended behavior.

Naming Convention

Property names can be specified in very relaxed terms. For instance cas.someProperty, cas.some-property, cas.some_property are all valid names. While all forms are accepted by CAS, there are certain components (in CAS and other frameworks used) whose activation at runtime is conditional on a property value, where this property is required to have been specified in CAS configuration using kebab case. This is both true for properties that are owned by CAS as well as those that might be presented to the system via an external library or framework such as Spring Boot, etc. When possible, properties should be stored in lower-case kebab format, such as cas.property-name=value.S ettings and properties that are controlled by the CAS platform directly always begin with the prefix cas. All other settings are controlled and provided to CAS via other underlying frameworks and may have their own schemas and syntax. BE CAREFUL with the distinction. Unrecognized properties are rejected by CAS and/or frameworks upon which CAS depends. This means if you somehow misspell a property definition or fail to adhere to the dot-notation syntax and such, your setting is entirely refused by CAS and likely the feature it controls will never be activated in the way you intend.

Validation

Configuration properties are automatically validated on CAS startup to report issues with configuration binding, specially if defined CAS settings cannot be recognized or validated by the configuration schema. The validation process is on by default and can be skipped on startup using a special system property SKIP_CONFIG_VALIDATION that should be set to true. Additional validation processes are also handled via Configuration Metadata and property migrations applied automatically on startup by Spring Boot and family.

Indexed Settings

CAS settings able to accept multiple values are typically documented with an index, such as cas.some.setting[0]=value. The index [0] is meant to be incremented by the adopter to allow for distinct multiple configuration blocks.

By Directory

CAS by default will attempt to locate settings and properties inside a given directory and otherwise falls back to using:

/etc/cas/config
/opt/cas/config
/var/cas/config

CAS has the ability to also load a Groovy file for loading settings. The file is expected to be found at the above matching directory and should be named ${cas-application-name}.groovy, such as cas.groovy. The script is able to combine conditional settings for active profiles and common settings that are applicable to all environments and profiles into one location with a structure that is similar to the below example:

// Settings may be filtered by individual profiles
profiles {
    standalone {
        cas.some.setting="value"
    }
}

// This applies to all profiles and environments
cas.common.setting="value"

By File

You can also use a dedicated configuration file to directly feed a collection of properties to CAS in form of a file or classpath resource. This is specially useful in cases where a bare CAS server is deployed in the cloud without the extra ceremony of a configuration server or an external directory for that matter and the deployer wishes to avoid overriding embedded configuration files.

Spring Cloud

The following settings are to be loaded by the CAS configuration runtime, which bootstraps the entire CAS running context. They are to be put inside the src/main/resources/bootstrap.properties of the configuration server itself. See this guide for more info.

The configuration server backed by Spring Cloud supports the following profiles.

Native

Load settings from external properties/yaml configuration files.

The following settings and properties are available from the CAS configuration catalog:

_{The configuration settings listed below are tagged as Third Party in the CAS configuration metadata. This flag indicates that the configuration setting is not controlled, owned or managed by the CAS ecosystem, and affects functionality that is offered by a third-party library, such as Spring Boot or Spring Cloud to CAS. For additional info, you might have to visit the third-party source to find more details.}

spring.cloud.config.server.native.add-label-locations=true

Flag to determine whether label locations should be added.

org.springframework.cloud.config.server.environment.NativeEnvironmentProperties.

spring.cloud.config.server.native.default-label=master

org.springframework.cloud.config.server.environment.NativeEnvironmentProperties.

spring.cloud.config.server.native.fail-on-error=false

Flag to determine how to handle exceptions during decryption (default false).

org.springframework.cloud.config.server.environment.NativeEnvironmentProperties.

spring.cloud.config.server.native.order=

org.springframework.cloud.config.server.environment.NativeEnvironmentProperties.

spring.cloud.config.server.native.search-locations=

Locations to search for configuration files. Defaults to the same as a Spring Boot app so [classpath:/,classpath:/config/,file:./,file:./config/].

org.springframework.cloud.config.server.environment.NativeEnvironmentProperties.

spring.cloud.config.server.native.version=

Version string to be reported for native repository.

org.springframework.cloud.config.server.environment.NativeEnvironmentProperties.

spring.profiles.active=

Comma-separated list of active profiles. Can be overridden by a command line switch.

org.springframework.boot.context.config.ConfigFileApplicationListener.

Configuration Metadata

Be Selective

YAGNI

Naming Convention

Validation

Indexed Settings

Git Repository

Allow the CAS Spring Cloud configuration server to load settings from an internal/external Git repository. This then allows CAS to become a client of the configuration server, consuming settings over HTTP where needed.

The following settings and properties are available from the CAS configuration catalog:

spring.cloud.config.server.git.basedir=

Base directory for local working copy of repository.